


'Round Midnight

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:53:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Spades Slick doesn't know what his playing does to you. Or maybe he does. When he plays, you couldn't care less. All you care about is that he keeps doing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sannam](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sannam).



> Named for the Thelonius Monk piece, naturally, which I listened to compulsively while writing. This is a trade with the wonderful sammy.

The first time you hear Spades Slick play is in passing. You're not on speaking terms yet, and you just made your way into the club one night because you'd heard from a friend of a friend that Kingpin's second-up lackey is closing some big deal there tonight. So you get yourself a drink and try not to look too out of place, though you still do. You shrug, take a drink, and just as you see the guy across the room, slipping into the back, the band starts up.

You appreciate for the moment the accompanying soundtrack. It is tense and building and it is pretty much perfect action music. No wonder there's a brawl here every night. The bass and oboe just have that effect on people.

You get halfway across the room before the piano comes in and attacks the room like a rottweiler on a steak. You stop up short as surely as if the pianist had leapt for your throat. He's a madman.

Might not look it to some. But you can tell. He's short and skinny and wears a good suit, black with something white on the lapel, too far to make out. He wears a sharp fedora, also black, and it's tipped at the angle that doesn't just say "don't mess with me" but "...because I'm going to get you first". He's got no sheet music, not even a set list, and he bends over the keys like he's systematically torturing the baby grand. You feel sorry for the piano.

And jealous of the people who have the leisure to show up here every night. It's incredible, this feeling like all of Midnight City stops to watch these four guys on the stage. The club is quiet, but wired. When the sax comes in you almost slug the guy behind you, because your blood is boiling with jazz, cigarette smoke and anticipation.

The piano filters into the background and you think the pianist looks a bit grudging about it. In the pause, sax growling into the club, you turn to the guy behind you and make sure not to give him a shiner but a question. "Hey, who's the guy on the keys," you ask him.

He looks surprised, possibly because you're the first person to speak since the opening song started. Possibly because he forgot how to talk and had to remember before he replied. "Are you kidding?" he replies."That's Spades Slick."

"The club owner?" You're surprised. You've heard of him. Everyone has. He made this city, and if you've spent more time wrangling Kingpin than you have the Midnight Crew, it's not for Spades Slick's lack of criminal activity. But you know, gotta start somewhere.

"You bet," says the guy. "Now shut up, will ya?" and he turns back to watching.

The piano kicks back in, Spades Slick leaping for the song's neck to tear out its throat. You watch through the set until they file off without a second glance at the room.

Walking home, you carry a haze of notes spinning around your head, and only remember when your head hits the pillow that you never followed Kingpin's goon. That means twice the work tomorrow.

Three times. Because there's no way you're not going back to that club tomorrow night.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time is a long time after, because Spades Slick doesn't play the next night. He plays when he wants to, you discover, and just drags the rest of the Midnight Crew along with his whims.

So you get back to work, and don't go by the club again, except to toss in a few hopeful glances while you're out padding around on the clock. Once in awhile you hear the bass, but despite Spades Slick's viciousness, you can't hear the piano from the streets.

Time passes. You have some trouble with your rent and one thing leads to another until Kingpin's deposed. You know how it is. His lackeys start squabbling over what's left, and Spades Slick quietly takes most of it while they're busy. A new gang moves in. They seem to like pool and clocks; you've got no distrust of either, but you start to develop it.

You start tracking Spades Slick, and that leads to a long and extended thing that you might later have to buckle down and term a courtship. For a long time, you've never had a better foe, and then you've never had a better rival, and eventually, you've never had a better friend. You don't really think about it like that. Things just... happen.

You go out drinking one night and wind up downing so much that neither of you can walk straight, and you stumble to Slick's nearest flat and howl at each other trying to walk straight. You flop on the couch together. The piano in the corner, a beaten black stand-up, draws your attention, and you say, "Hey, you should play something," and to your surprise he does, snarling slurred insults your way but stalking over to the piano all the same.

What he plays isn't what you expected, quieter than what you'd expected though he still jabs at the keys like he's got a switchblade in his hands. It's short and still remains inherently _Spades Slick_ throughout the whole thing, and though it's not what you heard at the club, it's just as astonishingly beautiful. When he turns around, shoulders hunched aggressively like you could ever mock him for this, you take his collar and pull him towards you, and to his credit, he still puts up a hell of a fight.

You fall into Slick's bed, tossed black sheets crumpling beneath you, and throw each other around in the best scuffle you've ever had, and immediately afterwards you both pass out. In the morning you can tell he's on the edge of freaking out (and you didn't get this close to Spades Slick without learning something), and you just give your voice a rough edge and say, "Man. Bet you're going to be _stupid about this_ ," and he immediately takes it as a challenge and decides not to be.

Later, you barely remember the way the song sounded, but you casually begin thinking of Slick as one of the best lovers you've ever had, and things just keep... happening.


	3. Chapter 3

You think it's kind of stupid to say you're fighting when the two of you fight all the time, you never stop fighting. You never come home without a cut lip or a shiner or a bashed head. It's more like you both just lost your temper for real this time, and not just as a matter of course.

You haven't seen Spades Slick in a week, which isn't much any other day but now that you're pissed at each other it stretches on to the horizon. Usually you can't see him for a week at a time; if you're not busy, he is. It doesn't hurt, it just builds, except for this week, after you stormed off in a flurry of self-righteous fury and he threw a fork after you with his usual pinpoint accuracy and sliced your ear from 20 feet.

After a day, you began to feel worse for the restaurant than for yourself. A day was all it took for the anger to subside into regret. You suspect that for Slick, it'll take more than a day.

So you pace, and botch your cases up, and blow three doorknobs into the hall in your anxiety. You shouldn't have said what you did, and Slick shouldn't have responded (and he definitely shouldn't have sniped you from behind with silverware). But after another day, you grudgingly admit that you can't really fault Slick for responding violently, physically and otherwise. Slick is nothing but violent reactions. You knew what you were getting into.

A week out, and you finally get it through your thick head that you're going to have to make the first move. Spades Slick might have it in him to apologise (gracelessly, and with some prompting) for something that was legitimately his fault, but you'd have an easier time dredging up Atlantis than you would getting him to cop first when you know right well it was your own damn doing. The fork was still too much, though.

You consider your closet. If Slick's going to beat the crap out of you you don't want to be wearing your nice duds. But in the interest of diplomacy, you shave and get your nice stuff on and wear the green tie he loves to hate. Around midnight you get into the club and find a good table- not close. Just a good view. It's not empty by any stretch of the imagination, but you've got the kind of look that says you're waiting for someone, and nobody tries to take your table.

You get a drink but you just turn the glass in your hands and wonder if Spades Slick is going to come out at all with you there. Nobody holds a grudge like Spades Slick, and you deserve it if he just ignores you for another couple weeks, no matter how brutal they are and how much you want to explain to him that you're sorry, sometimes you just say stupid stuff and it's like you didn't even come up with it, it's just out of nowhere.

Maybe he didn't see you, because at a quarter after midnight the Crew files out on stage. Diamonds Droog sends a colourless look your way and you know he at least caught you there. Hearts Boxcars merely looks a bit uncomfortable and Clubs Deuce might as well be on the moon for how completely clueless he is. But Slick doesn't look your way.

You know he sees you, though, because the first notes aren't random, not the first careful moments of finding a key and a couple chords to string together, but something carefully chosen. Slick picks out the notes like he might choose wine if he were Diamonds Droog. Selective. Knows what he's looking for.

It isn't Molasses Fatts' "How Can I See (When I Can't See A Thing)". After about a minute it segues into a variation on one of the Crew's standards, but Slick keeps tossing in Fatts riffs, tripping over accidentals and adapted to the Crew's minors, but Molasses Fatts all the same. A few people in the place nod in appreciation. It's for you, clearly. He's made his opinion on your musical taste quite clear and you had to stop him from burning your recording of the jazz legend.

So Slick doesn't look over, but you know he's seen you all the same. And that, even if you were a total dumbass earlier, that he still knows it's only the third time you've seen him play, and somehow, the two of you are good again.


	4. Chapter 4

He brings you to practice. You gather this violates a cardinal rule or two, but Slick's the boss, and what he says, goes.

You keep your mouth shut as Diamonds Droog asks blandly, "What's _he_ doing here?" Slick responds violently (physically and otherwise), giving Droog a cuff and a cuss and telling him to save his breath for the sax. Everybody proceeds to ignore you, and you perch at the side of the room and try to remain inconspicuous.

You'd kind of figured it was going to be like a performance, except with nobody there. But then, you don't really know anything about music. It's more like a big row between the entire Midnight Crew, occasionally punctuated by short periods of improvisation, which sounds a lot worse here than it does when they try it for real. Slick storms around the stage backhanding people (Droog doesn't allow him a second cuff) and swearing he'll never play again, and generally being a huge pain in the ass for everyone involved.

He calls a break after perhaps a minute total, combined, of playing, spaced across twenty, and slouches out the back with his shoulders raised like barricades. After a sidelong glance to check if he's coming back, Droog saunters over to you.

"None of the rest of us ever bring anyone," he says. "I think you're throwing off his groove."

"Are you kidding?" you ask. "Slick doesn't have anything remotely like a groove unless he's cutting one into people."  
Droog cracks a thin smile, and you get the feeling like you passed a little test. You haven't exchanged more than a handful of words with the guy before.

You take advantage of the moment and lay it on thick. You feel your words starting to clip, appearing more nonchalant, unattached. You're good at this, at gradually earning people over. "Liked what you did in the last show. Don't know anything about music. Liked it, though."

His thin smile turns up a little more, smugly, and his eyes smile a little too, though it's a cold and analyzing kind of smile. "It takes some work to get Slick around to the point where he's willing to play with the rest of us," he says, and you get the feeling he means it on a few levels, "but it pays off when he does."

"I caught the Fatts riffs," you say. "So you can just do that, just put anything in to what you're playing?"

Droog smiles again, like he'd like to put you in his freezer in pieces. "Yeah. Once you know enough. You know what fits and what almost fits. Or like Slick, you can hit a riff with a hammer until it pretends to fit in."

"How do you know?" you ask. "Where's it say?"

Droog pauses, gives you a look like you're a worm trying to get on the hook. "That's what keys and time are for," he explains skeptically, as if you couldn't really be asking something so basic. "Or, for Slick, what mangling pieces over our practice is for."

"He doesn't check?" you ask, a little groundless.

"Slick? He can't read a note," Droog says, and you gather this is another challenge. "He just plays by ear until he fumbles into music."

"Huh, wow," you say. "Guess it'd be easier to play around him than to try to make him learn, though."

Droog smiles, and you fumble into something kind of like friendship with him, and then Slick comes back and yells at him to get back to work.

In the second half of the practice, Droog tells Slick to choose something, and they all play around him. Once in awhile, they all fumble, not at once, but individually, and Droog makes notations on something and they all take it from somewhere earlier in the piece.

It's chopped up and broken, but you start to see where it becomes music, and for the last seven minutes they play something they've done before and it's as smooth as it was in any performance, and you stay leaning against the wall with your hat tipped to try to hide the fact that you think this is pretty much the coolest thing you've ever seen.


	5. Chapter 5

You were so sloshed the first time he played alone for you that you barely remember it. Or maybe it got drowned out in the scene that followed. Or maybe it was just the year between, every day either full to exhaustion or so slow your brain shut off, punctuated erratically by nights of heavy drinking and going home with your gangster, only yours on those nights, and those alone.

Besides, too much has happened since then. The Felt have proven to be more of a time sink than even Kingpin, and with the added bonus that they show up again as soon as you take one out. It's incredibly silly, and you are run off your feet for months trying to deal with them, and with the Midnight Crew, as worrying and awkward as that can be. Then after the big bomb scare at the mayor's, you and the rest of Team Sleuth get laid up in casts and by the end, you haven't seen Slick for months (outside of business), and you're jonesing for a fix. Everything's been hell lately, and you'd like to blow it all off.

As if in apology, a week after your cast comes off, Slick sends you a note via Deuce. "Where is he," you ask the little guy, unfolding the paper.

"Who?" he asks, staring at you with wide, vacant eyes. You could park a car between his ears, you suspect.

"Slick. What's he up to?"

"Oh, sorry Problem Sleuth," he says, as emptily happy as ever. "We're robbing the bank tomorrow, so he's got a lot of planning to do!"

The note is written in thick black marker and reads:

 _hear you're off the crutches  
get your lazy ass over here tonight and hear me play_

 _SS_

"Thanks Deuce," you say. You send him on the way and call in the threat to the station. No details, but they trust your sources (most of the time), and you trust they'll be on top of this job tomorrow. That's the way it works with you and Slick. Team Sleuth and the Midnight Crew aren't enemies. You don't think you'd be able to live that way, systematically raiding them and actively trying to put either a bullet in him or him in jail. You've settled for a sort of symbiotic give and take. He expects you to leak any information he's dumb enough to drop. You do, and the department deals with it. Slick's smarter than they are, and has most of them in his pocket. You concern yourself with your cases, and not big city business.

In the end, things stay pretty much the same. You're okay with that.

Around eleven, you walk over to the club, savouring the feeling of walking at all, and not gimping around like a chump. Ace Dick came by and scribbled terrible insults on your cast when you were knocked out, and you're just happy to have that monstrosity off your leg. You gave him a little "get well" note himself.

At midnight, the Crew plays, and you sit alone at your table with a glass of something good, and wait through it in that hovering delirious tension they always produce. A brawl starts in the back, and the Crew doesn't stop. You think they're encouraging it.

Slick plays, and the Crew plays around him. It's good, though you think he's not really losing himself as much as he used to. You don't think anybody else would notice. It doesn't matter; you're just glad to hear him, feeling that ache in your chest that watches the way he moves and wants him to move that way over you. It's a hungry sort of happiness, good where it is but chewing for more. It's good. And you're glad you came. The Crew finishes the set and you figure it'll be another hour before people file out and you can get to talk to Slick.

It's a bit more, in the end, and you're buzzing lightly as the club darkens and quiets around you. The light over your table stays, that and the stage. Boxcars locks up- "Evenin' Problem Sleuth." "Evening, Hearts."-and you wait.

And eventually, Spades Slick walks back out on the stage.


	6. Chapter 6

He doesn't say anything, just gives you a passing glance, but you can tell he's summing you up, checking what's changed. Maybe how you are. It's just in passing, and then he sits down at the bench and fixes his hat and places his hands, fingers splayed, above the keys.

You catch your breath.

He starts to play.

It's a long time before you can think of a way to describe it, even to yourself. It's. Well. It's.

If Slick was a great player before, this would probably make him a genius.

Nobody wrote this, you realize. This is all him. You can tell by the way he plays, hunched over the keys and stabbing at them. This is his, same as every fight is his, him stalking through a brawl snarling, knife in a reverse grip and slashing. This is his mouth claiming yours and the defensive tension to his shoulders when you go out walking by the bridge and you put your arm around him and he's scared he'll be seen even though the lights are all the way across the river and reflecting in ripples off the surface.

And he obviously didn't write it down. He learned this as he wrote it, note by note, committing them to memory. You can hear yourself in the music, a thread of something hopeful woven through the crashes and disaster Spades Slick wreaks on the keys. It's not jazz, you decide. It's something else.

You love jazz, but it's not an insult. It's just too... personal, you guess, to categorize.

After a couple of minutes, everything starts swelling, Slick's fingers racing up the board once, twice, down in intervals and punctuated by unexpected sounds. Slick stands slowly, to get more leverage, and still plays.

As if you're dreaming, you walk up to the stage to stand behind Slick, watching his motions and his body. Everything about him is screaming self-consciousness, not something Spades Slick ever feels except around you, and only when he's acting what you might call normal from anyone else. When he admits he might care some for you, or when he wants to take your hand or something in public. It's not very Spades Slick, but you know better than anyone that Slick was a man before he was Slick, and if he's coached himself into a certain way of living, he didn't always live this way.

He knows, too, of course he knows. Admitting it is just another thing that gets him defensive. That's why he's hunched up with his teeth grit now; for Spades Slick, this is like a big open speech to you about his feelings. You wonder what he's trying to say, but you don't have to think very hard.

I didn't like you, but you've kind of grown on me.   
I'm not the kind of guy to stay in one place too long.   
I didn't think you were anything different (but you were).   
I still don't want to talk about my past or how you make me feel.   
But I guess this is sort of the same thing.

That's what Spades Slick is saying as he crashes to a finale that wraps two separate themes in and throws them down a flight of stairs in a last race all the way down the keyboard. You half-expect him to collapse after; it looked like it was draining, the energy he puts in. But he's still standing, turned just a little away from you, and he waits, or maybe he hides.

"Oh," you say, because you're still sort of reeling over this whole feelings jam. Slick turns his head, and his expression is skeptical.

"Oh?" he repeats back at you.

"Wow," you add belatedly.

His mouth quirks. He's mollified, but not flattered enough. "Wow?" he asks.

"...thanks," you finally say, and raise your eyes up to his kind of shyly, because he just bared his soul to you, and you're still just astonished he ever would.

"...for?" he asks, and then you're sick of all this talking and stride forward to pull him to you, mashing your mouths together. He managed to tell you all this without a word, and you're not about to let Spades Slick get the better of you.


	7. Chapter 7

He makes this sound, this deep quiet growl, this hungry sound. You are ripping the clothes off each other in the darkened club up on the stage with just the one spotlight. You can't move quickly enough to get him out of them. You run your fingers, thick with rough nails and rougher pads, down his chest, and keep the other around him to feel him move.

You can't keep still, it's been three months or more and you've been living every day without him. And now you know he missed you, and no matter what he says now you know it's true, because he played it, and Spades Slick can't lie in music.

He's not that great a liar outside of it, either. You push your luck and mutter, "Miss me?" into his ear as your lips move against it and your teeth catch the little silver ring there and pull. Slick's chest jumps against yours as he groans, and he chokes "Miss who?" into your neck. You both grin before your mouths meet again and you clack teeth and swear, but keep going, because there's not a whole lot in the world better than your tongue in Slick's mouth.

Slick's real tough, and he can take a lot of damage, especially when you consider he's five-five tops and probably a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. So on those few moments where you can distance yourself enough to recognize that you get completely owned by a guy half your size and scrawny like a teenager, you always sort of laugh to yourself. But those moments never last, because you're too busy being owned by a guy half your size.

The rest of the time, your brain doesn't really have the capability of putting ideas together like that. Slick's got his shirt off, after all, and you're always totally entranced by him and the way you can see just a hint of his ribs, the slice of his hip bone. He's all sharp, no surprise, no padding on him at all; Slick's all elbows and knees. You always pay an inordinate amount of attention to those areas of him, licking at his hip and shoulders.

You push him down on the piano bench. It was made for playing the piano, and not to accommodate two guys like you, but it tries its best all the same. Admirable. Slick's head tilts off the edge, but that just bares his throat, and it's not like you mind. You get a knee between his legs and bend over him, sinking your teeth into the soft spot on his shoulder. Slick lets out a sound that's half growl and half "aw, yeah", and twists his hips into your leg. His fingers twist in your open shirt and won't let you move.

So you don't. You've got all you need right here. He's insistently shoving his cock against your leg, so you just jut your own hips up against his, shafts together. Then you wrap a hand around them (your hand is just big enough), and start pumping the both of you.

"Fuck," says Slick, with his head tipped back.

"Yeah," you mutter to him. This is fairly precarious, and it's taking all your effort to just support yourself. One of your legs is starting to shake. It's not used to having to do work anymore, with the busted ankle and everything. But you wouldn't trade it out for anything, right now, and the idea that the two of you should move to somewhere more comfortable and private would involve, you know, moving, which is obviously out of the question. Ankle's just going to have to grin and bear it (your weight, you mean).

There is no way you're taking your hands off Spades Slick for long enough to find somewhere else to do this.


	8. Chapter 8

The two of you rut together in the empty club, clothes cast out around you in a careless circle. There's nothing else but the sounds you're making, the two of you panting rhythmically and your breathing getting rougher. Once in awhile you punctuate. You bite his shoulder and he growls, or he'll moan around your tongue in his mouth.

You get so entranced at the sound of him that you let yourself go and just focus on him, sinking down to crouch over the piano bench he's laid out on and swallowing his cock. Sometimes you like to tease Slick in a little revenge for his constant needling, but now's not the time. Now you just need him, need to show him you get it. What he said to you, but didn't really say to you. You're just replying, is all.

All in all, it's a good thing you didn't just sit down and talk about your feelings. It'd be real hard to respond without taking him out of your mouth.

It's been a long time, and while you wouldn't really think Slick'd be the type to wait it out for you, he's obviously built something up, because it's really not all that long before he's getting stiff and arching against the bench. Right as he's starting to realize he's done, you grab his hand with your free one and sink your teeth into his wrist, biting down and sucking hard on the barcode tattoo there.

"Mother _fucker_ ," he says vehemently, and then Slick almost doubles up as he comes, eyes wide and fixed on his wrist in your mouth.

And just in time, too, because your ankle finally collapses under the strain and you curse as your leg buckles beneath you. It held out to the end, though. You're proud of it.

After a minute, Slick manages to pull himself off the bench to come find you, sprawled out beside it and still pretty hard, even through the not-inconsiderable pain. White splatters across his chest, shiny in the stage light; he retrieves his shirt from halfway across the room and wipes it off carelessly.

For a moment, he just stands over you, and you get forcibly thrown back to earlier meetings, back before you were friends and way before you became this, where he'd pace over top of you with some vicious tool meant to unmake you in one hand, and he'd never really end up killing you. You'd mess each other up pretty badly, and sometimes he'd walk around like an angry jaguar when he'd knocked you down and you'd think, "This is it," and wait for him to try to end you.

He throws his shirt back into the darkness and looks down at you, flushed and still panting. He looks dazed but intent, and you catch yourself thinking it, as much for old times' sakes as anything. "This is it," you think, and you wait for Spades Slick to end you.

It's not quite the same thing, when he does descend on you, still humming and alight with tension, but you are sufficiently obliterated when he finishes, and for awhile, maybe it feels sort of the same.


	9. Chapter 9

After that, you lose track of the times he's played for you, because he does so all the time. Now when he drags you home, it's a matter of time before he stalks over to the piano and flips the lid up. When you come by the club in the afternoon, you'll find him practicing. You think he sets it up so you'll find him that way. Droog comments to you quietly during a practice break that you might not be capable of noticing, but Slick's playing has improved.

You're no musician, but you've noticed all the same. In a way, it's becoming less Spades Slick. You think that might be because Spades Slick is becoming something else himself. He isn't so vicious with the keys anymore. His repairman has got to be grateful. He doesn't stab at them (well, sometimes during a really great solo, he still does), he doesn't seem to be attacking the piano.

When you take the river walk home, he slings an arm around your waist.

One night, 'round midnight, you sit in the club, surrounded by jazz and cigarette smoke and people. This is pretty firmly your table, these days. The Crew gets up to play, and you can hear, laced into Slick's first solo, a trace of that theme he played earlier, that little thread of something hopeful. There's a trace of it in everything, these days, when you walk in on him practicing or when he flips the lid up after a night out.

You'll sit through the act, and then when everybody's driven out of the club into wet midnight streets, you'll stay here and Slick'll play again, just for you. The floating anticipation in the air sifts its way into you as Slick finishes his solo, and right as the oboe comes in you feel a tap on your shoulder.

"Hey," says the guy. "Who's the madman wrecking the ivories?"

"Are you kidding?" you ask low over Deuce's solo. "That's Spades Slick."

"Who, the guy who owns the place?" he asks. He looks around like he doesn't quite believe you.

You turn back to the stage as the oboe dies out and the keys jump forward to take the solo back. Slick kicks the bench back and, for a second, glances out to the room. He doesn't have to look. He knows where you sit. You know he can't see you, but all the same, he smirks out into the dark room before he loses himself in something you know he wrote for you.

"That's the one," you tell the guy. "Now shut up, will you?"


End file.
